Green-tech startups exploring solutions for Africa’s future

By Alexander Chiejina

In recent times, there has been a rise in green-tech startups in Africa developing bespoke solutions that are tailored at directly mitigating or slashing emissions, assisting in adapting to impacts of climate change, enhancing climate understanding whilst making profit and scaling growth. Little wonder climate tech has emerged as a major category for European and US startups, raising over $111 billion (£97 billion) globally in 2022, according to The State of Tech In Africa 2023.

Hundreds of firms now develop bespoke innovations that focus on solutions, products and services that counter the negative impacts of industries on the environment, climate and human populations across the various innovation archetypes – renewable energy; green (low emissions) transport; green (low energy and emissions) buildings and construction; water resource management; sustainable agriculture; reforestation; water and waste management, including clean information and technologies (ICTs). In Africa, green tech fulfils different needs with the main challenge being how to adapt to an already-changing climate while developing its economy sustainably.

Investing in waste management

Mr. Green Africa, a tech-enabled plastics recycling company in Kenya, is disrupting the current informal and exploitative plastic recycling sector in Kenya, offering in-house end-to-end process for recycling, purchasing directly from their sourcing agents; waste pickers who are some of society’s most marginalised people.

For Mr. Green who owns and operates a series of trading hubs across Nairobi where they transact with their sourcing agents directly to purchase their collected plastic for onward transfer to Mr. Green manufacturing plant, the collected plastics are processed and sold as post-consumer recycled plastics to plastics manufacturers for use by large fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies, such as Unilever.

“Mr. Green Africa recycles and sells ethically sourced materials with a traceable social and environmental impact. It currently engages over 2,000 previously marginalised waste collectors and sells over 2,000 metric tonnes of fairly sourced recycled materials for local and international markets. The business seeks to formalise the plastics supply chain and create jobs, as well as relieve growing cities from plastic pollution,” Business A.M. gathered.

With a Guaranteed Investment Funds (GIF) investment of $1 million equity and debt, Mr. Green is developing and building the business through GIF investment to grow their plastics processing volumes by opening further trading points, onboarding additional sourcing agents, investing in IT upgrades to run a cashless operation, running additional shifts on existing processing machinery, and investing in new machinery to increase the quality of their recycled plastics and their margins.

The start-up is already able to offer premium prices to their sourcing agents, over and above other local plastic recycling companies due to their ability to streamline the value chain and increase the end-value of the recycled materials through high-quality processing. As Mr Green continues to develop and innovate, through GIF’s investment, Mr Green expects to be able to improve their operating margins and focus explicitly on improving their engagement with sourcing agents and the employment benefits they offer.

Investing in agritech

ThriveAgric, a tech startup in Abuja, Nigeria, leverages technology to empower smallholder farmers across Africa by linking them to finance, data-driven best practices, and access to local and global markets for their commodities; towards ensuring food security for all.

From a small town in Kaduna State, Nigeria with less than 500 smallholder farmers, the startup was able to ensure that 800,000+ of grains were produced and traded; 500,000+ farmers were onboarded; 2,600+ communities were reached; 400,000+ hectares were cultivated; 9000+ jobs were created; 225,000+ metric tonnes of storage was acquired and 450+ warehouses were available.

“We explore a full range of agricultural technology solutions that ensure maximum value at the least possible cost to smallholder farmers and other relevant stakeholders, ultimately leading to food security for Africans and the world. Our goal is to unlock sustainable value for smallholder farmers by providing the following: Input Financing; Development & Training; Technology Services; Post-Harvest Services; Access to Premium Markets; as well as Social and Financial Inclusion,” the company said on its website.

Addressing unreliable water supplies

Access to clean and freshwater remains a fundamental human right as driven by the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (UN’s SDG 6). Sadly, access to clean water as an essential resource in Africa is not yet fully realised. Efforts to enhance access to clean water remain essential and a priority for the African continent.

To actualize this, CityTaps, a social and tech company seeking to provide running water to every urban home in Niger, provides IoT tech solutions via smart metres to the national utility company, Société d’Exploitation des Eaux du Niger (SEEN), assisting them provide drinking water to underserved communities in a sustainable manner.

SweetSense — a tech company that provides low-cost remote monitoring for water, energy and environmental projects in Rwanda, leverages sensor technology to monitor water pump performance. In the same vein, EZ Farms, created by IBM Research in South Africa, is an Internet of Things (IoT) remote water monitoring system that utilises sensors to inform small-scale farmers how to better manage water and agricultural aggregators (websites or a computer programme that sums up specific type of information from multiple online sources) to enable farmers identify the best prospects for business.

While clean-tech startups in Africa were able to raise $863 million in 69 deals, most of them above $5 million according to two State of Tech Reports, Partech and the Big Deal, renewable energy, agritech and clean energy alternatives dominated the climate-tech technology product sectors in terms of VC funding raised by startups, deals made and growth in the sectors in Africa.

“Although Africa still may have many challenges in its way, there are also many opportunities for rapid advancement if the right questions are asked, such as how the continent can get ahead of the curve and collaborate across countries to build financially viable power projects. Africa’s economic future depends on the rapid development of ICT and related infrastructure across the continent, but it’s essential that all future projects and rollouts are in line with global best practice in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Our hope is that AfricaCom will play a major role in connecting entrepreneurs, big corporate and major public sector players to create homegrown innovations that could help to drive these changes,” James Williams, director, events, at Informa Tech, disclosed recently at Africa Tech Festival.